


One for the Road

by Gleefullymacabre



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage, F/M, Love at First Sight, Post-Underdark, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 07:46:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9375059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gleefullymacabre/pseuds/Gleefullymacabre
Summary: Pike has to travel across Tal'Dorei for an arranged marriage.  The journey there might be the adventure she's been yearning for.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I intended to write an Arranged Marriage AU. I'm... not exactly sure what I'm writing now.
> 
> Takes place shortly after the Underdark. Pike was never part of Vox Machina.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Pike burst out when her great-great-Grandfather announced he had contacted a distant relative to arrange a marriage for her.

“You’re of marrying age, young Pike,” Wilhand stated, his stout arms crossed. “It’s your duty to carry on the Trickfoot line, for Her sake.” He gestured to the small prayer corner and the statue of Sarenrae, their patron deity.

Pike wilted under his gentle chiding. “I know, Pawpaw,” she conceded, then immediately brightened. “But all the gnome villages are so far away. Wouldn’t it make more sense for us to travel there instead of him coming here?”

He chuckled and patted her head. “Young Grog doesn’t bring you enough tales of his adventures, eh? Want to run off and have your own?”

Pike tried not to grimace at his tone. Wilhand was several hundred years old, and still saw Pike as a child. “We could travel with Grog,” she offered. “No one would bother us with a goliath around.”

WIlhand’s smile grew sad before it vanished entirely. “I know Westruun can be dull, but most of our family has already turned from Sarenrae’s path for us. And you, Pike. You’re special. For you to lose Her blessing would be…” His voice cracked and he pressed quavering lips together.

Guilt struck her like a blow. The story of how Sarenrae changed the course of the Trickfoot family had been told and retold throughout her life. Yet one by one, each of Wilhand’s children and grandchildren had returned to the old ways of trickery and thieving. Pike’s parents had turned to piracy shortly after her birth, abandoning her to be raised by the patriarch. She still dreamed, sometimes, of joining a crew herself and finding them. It was a silly idea. She had no memory of their faces, and they were most likely dead. Gnomes, she knew, did not last long on adventures.

She squeezed his hand. “Grog should be passing by soon,” she said. “Maybe… maybe he can stay for the wedding?”

Wilhand smiled and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You’re a good girl, Pike.”

She smiled weakly back. If only that were true.

* * * * *

“I’m running out of rhymes,” Scanlan complained. “Like, bike, tyke, that one Vax won’t let me use anymore.”

Vax grunted from the back of his sister’s pet bear. He had emerged from the Underdark somewhat worse for wear, half his foot destroyed. The healers in Emon were occupied with undoing Lady Kima’s paralysis. A thief’s foot meant little compared to the life of a titled paladin. 

Grog, of all people, had the solution. “Me buddy, Pike,” he shouted. “She been healing things since we was li’l. Probably grow the whole fuckin’ foot back.”

“Probably charge a fortune for it as well,” Vex muttered, thinking of the heavy purse of gold waiting for them in Kraghammer.

“Grog wouldn’t lie to us, would he?” Keyleth asked, not as quietly as she had intended.

“Not intentionally,” Percy answered. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if this friend of his peddles counterfeit potions.”

“Then why did we come all this way?”

“No one had a better idea.”

Scanlan plucked absently at his lute while the kid bickered, but inspiration remained out of reach. He had a few ideas of what this Pike chick might look like based on Grog’s infrequent stories of his childhood friend. “She’s a monstah,” he would growl with pride. Probably another goliath, Scanlan thought, fingers dancing across the strings. Or an orc. Huge, scarred from fighting. The only way to earn Grog’s respect was to kick his ass, and Pike was clearly Grog’s favorite person. Scanlan sighed with much drama, his ennui ignored by the rest of the group. He had been bereft of female companionship since Kraghammer. And that elf had been a monster in her own right. He was in the mood for something softer.

Maybe Westruun had a brothel.

As though deliberately adding to the tragedy of Scanlan’s life, Grog led them passed the main entrance to the city to the outskirts of town, near something called a Bramblewood. Despite long practice, he could not keep up with the taller people, and brought up of the rear of the party by the time Grog motioned for everyone to stop. Scanlan peered between legs, and caught a glimpse of a house far in the distance. He groaned softly at the thought of so many more miles. Instead of striding ahead, however, Grog leaned his head back and let out a battle roar. Everyone grabbed for their weapons. Vax slid from the bear’s back, snatching daggers from his belt. Scanlan clutched his lute. Everyone looked around for whatever Grog spotted that they had missed.

The door to the distant house flew open, and a pale creature darted out, headed straight for them. Grog, weapons untouched, ran forward with a cruel cackle.

Percy blinked, dumbfounded. “Do my glasses need to be calibrated, or…?

“No,” Vax replied, equally stunned. “We see it, too.”

The house was not as far away as it seemed. Rather, it was small. And the small creature that ran from the house met Grog in the center of the field, leaping into the air and punching his fist in a display so pathetic, her fist should have squeaked. 

Keyleth pointed at the duo. “I… was not expecting that.”

Scanlan, for once, had nothing to say. Not a goliath or an orc or a particularly fearsome dwarf. Grog’s friend Pike was a gnome. A lovely, hopefully single female gnome.

He ducked behind Vex’s leg and cast Prestidigitation on himself to banish the dust from the road. Swiping his hair back, he cursed his sturdy armor. The burgundy leather was flashier than most travelers preferred, but he had nicer clothes tucked away in his pack. No time to get them or get changed. He would go for Rakish Swashbuckler and hope for the best.

“You can call him Percy,” Grog said following Percy’s inevitably long introduction. “And…who’d I miss?”

“You saved the best for last, of course.” Scanlan parted the twins’ cloaks like they were curtains and stepped to the center of the group before Pike’s startled blue eyes. She was even prettier up close, he decided with a thrill. 

“Scanlan Shorthalt, the leader of this motley group.” He bowed with a flourish, stepping closer as he straightened to slip his hand under hers. “We’ve heard much of your might,” he said, leaning close and dropping his voice to a honeyed murmur. “But not nearly enough of your beauty.”

“Oh,” she breathed, her eyes wide. Scanlan almost discarded subtly altogether to steal a kiss from those perfect pink lips, but a hand pulled him off his feet by the back of his shirt.

“This ain’t no Lady Favor House,” Grog hissed. Not in anger, but in explanation, as though stopping Scanlan from embarrassing himself. Hah, fat chance.

“I was just being polite,” Scanlan lied. 

“You really travel with them?” Piked asked, fascination written across her face.

Scanlan struck a pose, ignoring the fact that Grog still held him aloft. “Why, dear, in my time, I’ve traveled all across Tal’dorei and beyond. I’d be happy to tell you of my travels. Perhaps over dinner?”

“As fun as it is watching Scanlan get shot own, I think gangrene has set in.” Vax held onto his sister while he pulled off his boot, much to her disgust.

“Ugh, brother! Your feet smell terrible!”

“If someone would heal me, it might now smell so bad.”

“Oh, dear!” Pike rushed over to examine the remains of his foot. Scanlan shot Vax a glare for stealing her attention away. “You’d better come inside. I might need to pray over this for a while.”

To everyone’s surprise, they all fit in the tiny house. Grog ducked in and settled near the fireplace as though he had done so every day of his life. Which, Scanlan belatedly realized, he probably had.

Pike settled Vax on a chair near the small alter. “Pawpaw’s at the market right now, but does anyone want some tea? I mean, I can’t actually make tea very well, but…”

“Foot please,” Vax demanded, sounding very similar to Trinket when he begged at the table.

Abandoning her uncertain hostess duties, Pike knelt over Vax’s partial foot, took the pendant hanging around her neck into her hands and closed her eyes in prayer. Scanlan took the opportunity to admire her profile.

To everyone’s shock, after only a few brief minutes, a bright glow sifted through her tiny fingers. Pike pressed the symbol to Vax’s stump with one hand and held his heel in a strong grip with the other, grapping him as he tried to pull away. A few minutes passed in silence aside from Vax’s panicked yelps, then the glow faded. Pike sighed in satisfaction and opened her eyes to examine the newly grown foot.

Vex blinked at her twin’s limb. “Wow.”

“Indeed,” Percy echoed in an awed tone. “Well done.”

Scanlan said nothing, a thousand verses suddenly running through his mind. In Pike, he found something far better than a fling.

He found a muse.


End file.
